A man found a £4 plate in a charity shop that was worth thousands (Image: Getty)
A man found a £4 plate in a charity shop that ended up being worth thousands of pounds.
Carpet cleaner John Carcerano is an avid thrifter and had waited for staff to restock the shelves before looking through the plates at a shop in Illinois, USA.
He told “Sometimes I spend a few hours waiting for the carts to come out. I find it’s best to get them when they first come out because by the time they make it to the shelves, most good stuff is gone.
“The plate was underneath a modern plate and three other people were digging on the cart with me. When everybody walked away from the cart, including me after we went through it, in the corner of my eye I noticed the plate was underneath a modern one.”
Beneath it was a piece of porcelain – an 18th-century Chinese armorial export plate. John took a picture of the plate on Google Lens and found a similar one that was recently sold for £3,550.
John contacted auction houses to authenticate the plate (Image: John Carcerano)
He contacted auction houses to verify the authenticity of the plate, including the prestigious Sotheby’s in New York.
“The guy at Sotheby’s is a Chinese export specialist — he identified it. I sent the plate information and detailed photos to Bonhams, they identified it. I also sent it to Leslie Hindman’s located in Chicago,” Carcerano said.
According to Newsweek, the Sotheby’s specialist said the plate was specifically a “Chinese export armorial chamfered rectangular platter” from the Qing dynasty’s Qianlong period, around 1775. He estimated the plate’s estimated value between £3,230 and £4,840.
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“What makes my plate stand out is the condition — it was never eaten on or used; no scratches, it’s pristine,” Carcerano said.
His find comes a few weeks after a woman in Texas bought a Louis XVI marble-top buffet cabinet, paying £2,500 for the furniture piece after the original buyer spent £18,100 on it.
Inside was a stack of Hermes boxes, housing a full set of perfect-condition Hermes China. The stunned shopper said on she had “no words” for her discovery.